that will also integrate their ballistic missile defense systems and give Tokyo a bigger security role in Asia as China's military power grows.
The Japanese military's cyber defense unit has around 90 members, compared to more than 6, 000 people at the Pentagon,
Assaults on government websites are now being detected ever few seconds according to Japanese cyber defense experts.
In the statement on Saturday, Japan's defense ministry pledged to"contribute to join"efforts for addressing various cyber threats,
unveiled a more muscular military cyber strategy in April that stressed an ability to retaliate with cyber weapons.
That strengthened deterrence comes in the wake of high-profile attacks against corporations including the hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment last year,
#Wearable device provides continuous fetal monitoring The Pregsense monitor has woven sensors into an elastic harness to provide data around the clock on the status of the fetus and the mother's health in the later stages of pregnancy.
A bluetooth-enabled device attached to the monitor collects and transmits data such as the mother and baby's heart rates to a smartphone and stores it on a secure cloud-based database accessible only to expectant mothers and their physicians.
The device is the work of the Nuvo Group, led by Oren Oz. He says a smartphone app will eventually provide a visual representation of the data gathered by the wearable monitor."
"Now you can see both you and the baby, the heart and all the data. What you are going to get in the app eventually is visualization that can tell you where the hand is,
you're going to see if the baby is awake, you can hear your baby's heartbeat anytime you want and obviously everything about you as the mom, the activity,
if you are relaxed, how you sleep, your activity, your heart activity, everything about your pregnancy will be put into data,
"he explained as he demonstrated the device for mother-to-be, Michal. Oz founded the Nuvo Group with another pregnancy technological innovation, Ritmo,
a strap allowing mothers to stream soothing music from a smartphone to gently stimulate the fetus.
who require monitoring without having to see her doctor.""It connects me a lot more with the fetus,
I also won't have to be dependent on a doctor, at any given time I'll be able to connect,
The Pregsense strap is designed to collect data to help physicians detect symptoms that may lead to complications in pregnancy earlier."
"It's the first time that you have a huge amount of data of women and babies together about heart rate, kickings,
position for fetus etc and we will be able to analyze this data to predict about events of pregnancy,
like pre-term labor like preeclampsia and more and we will be able to intervene in the right time,
"said Varda Shalev, a medical informatics expert and active care primary physician. She is an external consultant to the Tel aviv-based Nuvo Group.
The Pregsense monitor does not use ultrasound like traditional doppler devices which require pregnant women to lie still
The sensors use a patented algorithm to filter the signals it picks up into two heartbeat recordings.
Its developers say the passive sensors avoid the potential harm to tissue posed by ultrasonic devices
The data collected is of high enough quality to be useful for clinicians and researchers.""The sophistication of the technology and the sophistication of the sensors that we had designed for that is really making
what used to be clinical data collection into passive continuous reliable home data collection, "said Professor Nathan Intrator,
a bio signal expert and chief technology officer for Nuvo Group. Nuvo Group's advisory board member Professor Simcha Yagel, who also heads the division of obstetrics and gynecology at Hadassah,
Hebrew University Medical centers, said the electrocardiogram (ECG) provides the added value to the device.""I think the new achievement of Nuvo is in the field of detection of the ECG traces of the fetus,
not only the sound not only the ultrasound but truly an electronic ECG,"he told Reuters during a routine ultrasound scan for a pregnant woman in hospital.
Oz said doctors would appreciate not having to use traditional heavy machinery, such as the cardiotocography (CTG) or electronic fetal monitor (EFM) machines to trace the fetal heartbeat.
Instead, they could track and diagnose patients remotely, allowing quick detection and intervention.""The immediate impact, the immediate benefit to doctors is that we are replacing the bulky CTG machines
which are connected heavy and to the wall with the light weight mobility and continuous monitoring."
"said Oz. The consumer version of the product, known as Ritmo Beats, is to be launched for users by the end of 2015
and will cost around $250 USD, Oz said. The clinical grade FDA-regulated device, to be teamed with a group of physicians to monitor the data
and alert the mother of any unexpected events, has a 2016 launch target. Oz is certain his invention will change pregnancy care management
and"bring better care to more women at a fraction of the cost".
#Cheap 3d printed robotic arm controlled by the mind The technology used by most robotic arms
and hands on the market-and many more of those in development-typically comes with large overheads.
though, learning almost exclusively online in forums and emails, Lachappelle has managed to synthesize a series of robotic hands that could change industries
and lives-and most of which cost just a few hundred dollars. While other developments in countries like Austria and Argentina have pushed the boundaries of prosthetic offerings,
so it kind of works kind of like a muscle sensor in that it picks up small electric discharges and turns that into something you can actually read within software,
"he told Reuters Television. One of the most important aspects of the Anthromod design is the way in
which it's controlled by the software, which Lachappelle says is different from the types of control that exist in other robotic platforms.
as more advanced controls are created it's the software that's doing the heavy lifting,
using algorithms that make the arm easier to use.""A good example is had we actually an amputee use the wireless brainwave headset to control a hand,
and he was able to fluently control the robotic hand in right around about 10 minutes,
so the learning curve is hardly a learning curve any more, "he said. The arms themselves might not look polished
with some using a wireless brainwave headset, designed more for prosthetic use. Another of his tele-robotic controlled hands was created with dangerous environments in mind
where humanlike robots could be sent to allow people to monitor situations and intervene from afar."
accelerometers to track your wrist and elbow, and then an IMU sensor as well to track your bicep rotation as well as your shoulder movement,
and that gets all translated wirelessly to the robotic arm where it will copy what you do said,
One of the most impressive aspects of the arm is not the hardware itself or even the software that controls it-but the fact that it can be 3d printed for a fraction of the cost of modern prosthetics.
This allows him to make complex internal structures to the designs which would otherwise be impossible,
"he told Reuters."The full robotic arm is actually open source, and so people are now actually able to take this,
The Anthromod itself cost only about 600 dollars to make, Lachappelle said. His work is documented in the videos he made at home
showing his handiwork-all part of his effort at making the invention open source -which means anyone can take his technology
and customize and build on it. The idea, he said, is not to create something that can solve problems for those with prostheses
because we this open source, we want someone that has a 3d printer, or very little printing experience, to be able to replicate this,
to be able to use this for new applications, to be able to adapt it into new situations,
Lachappelle hopes his efforts will contribute to developments in bomb defusal robots, heavy equipment and heavy industrial automation robotic arms,
former federal employees affected by data breach Hackers breached the computers of the U s. government agency that collects personnel information for federal workers in a massive cyber attack that compromised the data of about 4 million current and former employees,
ADVERTISING OPM detected new malicious activity affecting its information systems in April and the Department of Homeland Security said it concluded at the beginning of May that the agency's data had been compromised.
The breach affected OPM's IT systems and its data stored at the Department of the interior's data center,
which is shared a service center for federal agencies, a DHS official said on condition of anonymity.
whether other agencies'data had been affected. OPM had previously been the victim of another cyberattack, as have various federal government computer systems at the State department, the U s. Postal service and the White house."
"The FBI is working with our interagency partners to investigate this matter, "the bureau said in a statement."
the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement.
because Americans may expect that federal computer networks are maintained with state of the art defenses.""""It's clear that a substantial improvement in our cyber databases
and defenses is perilously overdue,"Schiff added d
#Mood-changing wearable tech sets pulses racing The makers of'doppel'call it the next generation of wearable technology-one that can actually change the mood of the user.
They say the device taps in to the body's natural rhythm and gives the wearer control over how alert
And it works in a very similar way as to when you listen to upbeat or downbeat music.
engineers and designers who met on a joint course run by Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art.
Together they formed Team Turquoise to make their hypothesis a reality. Co-creator Nell Bennett explained how doppel represents truly empathic wearable technology
instead of the current crop that often just monitor the body's activity.""Wearables currently are centered mostly around monitoring
"Bennett told Reuters. Doppel is synchronized to each individual via a smartphone app that measures their resting heart rate.
"You take your resting heart rate through your phone, and then that's the bio-data we need to set the levels that you need to either (get) calm
or to get going. It's not a lot of data, but we're using it very smartly,
and that's the approach we take, "said co-developer Jack Hooper. To control the level of doppel's pulse,
Team Turquoise says prototype models have been tested successfully on hundreds of people. They say doppel was tested also independently by psychologists at Royal Holloway University of London;
with their controlled tests showing the device can improve alertness when correctly set to the user's preference.
The team is planning further independent tests aimed at validating doppel's ability to calm people down
and reduce anxiety. They recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to turn their prototypes in to consumer-ready models,
Bilicki, along with the rest of Team Turquoise, believe doppel is a unique and game-changing addition to the burgeoning wearable technology market."
#Glasses that make cancer glow When Sandy Sagitto was diagnosed with breast cancer she was devastated.""First thought is that
I couldn't believe that I drew that card from the deck. I had no risk factors going in,
when her doctors said they needed to remove the cancer forming in her body. Sagitto, 53, a neurosurgery nurse for the past 25 years,
was open to the idea of participating in a clinical trial to test out a new technology that gives surgeons the ability to visualize cancer cells in real time
while they operate.""Wow, we have headed into the Superman realm. You have the x-ray vision,
It's better than x-ray vision, according to Dr. Samuel Achilefu, a professor of radiology at Washington University,
a procedure to remove a portion of the breast to treat cancer, surgeons rely on scans taken before the operation to decide how much tissue to remove.
He says differentiating between healthy cells and cancer cells is hard, which is why surgeons remove an excess amount of healthy tissue when operating,
and even when erring on the side of caution, up to 25 percent of patients need a repeat procedure to remove more cancerous tissue."
"The primary goal of the technology is to make sure that the surgeon does not operate in the blind,
The system works by first injecting the patient with a cancer-targeting dye that attaches to abnormal cells.
which allows a surgeon wearing specialized glasses to see cancer cells glowing.""What this does is conserve the healthy tissue
Currently the cancer glasses are being tested on skin and breast cancer patients, but Dr. Achilefu says they could be used to visualize
and remove a wide range of cancers. He says lighting up cancer means a brighter future for people diagnosed with the deadly disease e
#Chimaera device paves way for wireless pain relief The hand-held device, called Chimaera, could revolutionize the delivery of miniaturized neurostimulators to specific nerves,
whether that's pain from a broken leg or pain from a headache. So by putting an electrical signal directly into target nerves-in a known way,
"explained Simon Karger from technology developers Cambridge Consultants. The main challenge with neurostimulation procedures is safely accessing the correct nerve
Chimaera is designed to make implanting neuromodulators to nerves much easier by integrating surgical sensing and implant delivery functions in one intelligent device.
It uses preoperative CT (computerized tomography) scan data to create a 3d X-ray image of the patient,
enabling surgeons to identify critical structures, such as nerves and blood vessels. This combines with the intraoperative data from Chimaera's sensing technology to guide the surgeon to the precise location of a procedure,
helping to ensure the surgical device stays on a predetermined safe pathway. The real-time data generation is designed to be used in conjunction with optical wearable technology, such as Google glass.
This means a surgeon can literally'see'exactly where they are within the body at any point during an operation.
Once the target nerve has been reached the sensors also let the surgeon know, and the implant can then be deployed down the device.
Karger said their aim was to figure out how neuromodulators-measuring less than a centimeter in length-could be implanted as simply and quickly as possible.
Chimaera, he said, could allow doctors around the world perform a procedure that can currently only be carried out by a handful of people."
"With Chimaera, what we've done is we've combined smart sensing technology, preoperative planning,
we've taken small implant form-factors; and we've combined both implant delivery with surgical tool to provide a completely connected,
unified surgical system that has the potential to take a surgery that maybe only four
or five people in the world can carry out today and make it accessible to a broad cross-section of general surgeons.
By doing that we make it accessible to a much, much broader patient population, "he said.
The developers said that while most of today's surgical tools are largely passive, offering surgeons little feedback,
Chimaera opens the door to a new generation of neurostimulation implant procedures. It could they say,
enable more surgeons to carry out complex operations at lower risk and with better results for patients.
While it may be some time before a device like Chimaera is in surgeons'hands, Karger said it could pave the way for wireless pain management for patients using, for example, their mobile phone:"
"Imagine a migraine sufferer who literally as they feel the onset of their migraine, can reach for their cell phone
and dial-down the pain. That is a life-changing therapy for that patient. And crucially what it does is it changes that patient from a patient into a consumer;
they don't need to feel like a patient anymore.""Developers Cambridge Consultants say Chimaera is the equivalent of a'concept car'that demonstrates their vision for the next generation of surgery.
They say that all of the technologies that are used in Chimaera currently exist, and they are now looking for partners to lead a product development cycle to turn it into a medical device ready for market t
#Scientists control mouse brain by remote control The tiny implant, smaller than the width of a human hair, let the scientists determine the path a mouse walks using a remote control to inject drugs
and shine lights on neurons inside the brain. Neuroscientists have until now been limited to injecting drugs through larger tubes
and delivering photostimulation through fiber-optic cables, both of which require surgery that can damage the brain
and restrict an animal's natural movements. The optofluidic implant developed by the team from Washington University School of medicine
and the University of Illinois was found to damage and displace much less brain tissue than the metal tubes,
or cannulas, scientists typically use to inject drugs. The device is mounted to the head of the mouse
and is powered by a small battery, removing the need for it to be wired, and contains tiny reservoirs filled with the drugs to be administered during tests.
In one such experiment, mice were made to walk in circles after a drug that mimics morphine was injected into the region of the mouse's brain that controls motivation and addiction.
In other tests the scientists used a technique known as optogenetics, where mice have been modified so that their neurons are lights sensitive,
to stimulate the mice's brain cells with miniature LEDS. The test subjects were made to stay on one side of a cage by remotely making the implant shine pulses of light on the specific cells.
The mice were about three feet away from the remote antenna during the experiments. The research, published recently in scientific journal Cell,
could lead to the development of more minimally invasive probes to treat neurological disorders including stress, depression, addiction,
and pain n
#Candle power to charge smartphones A power outage-it's an experience all are familiar with and everyone dreads.
The lights go out, the TV goes black, the computers shut down as their batteries drain. And worst of all-your smartphone dies.
This scenario was one of the inspirations for Andrew Burns of California startup Stower to develop the candle charger.
Its simplistic design is based on the principles of thermoelectrics, which have been around since the early 1800's. Light a candle, fill the device with water,
and you have a charger.""So the way thermoelectric generators work is you have a hot plate
and a cold plate and you smash these generators together and it's that temperature difference,
it creates a diffusion of energy from the hot side to the cold side, "said Burns, cofounder of the company.
That diffusion outputs between 2-3 watts, about the same amount of power derived from a USB port-perfect for charging smartphones and tablets.
In an emergency situation a small amount of energy can go a long way, says Burns.""Part the power of a mobile handset
or a smartphone is infinitely greater than a vacuum cleaner and they only need tiny little bits of energy,
"he added. The company has developed also a similar device designed to charge phones over a campfire.
Burns advises to keep devices off and enjoy Nature when outdoors, but says that's not always an option."
"I'd rather send a text from the top of a mountain than from a desk in my office,
and provide sustainable micro-energy solutions in emerging markets. Stower has raised nearly $27, 000 on Kickstarter for the candle charger with 30 days left in the campaign n
#Scientists Create Liquid Metal Antenna By placing an electrical potential across the interface between liquid eutectic gallium and indium and an electrolyte,
Dr Adams and his colleagues found that they could cause the metals to spread by applying a positive voltage
or to contract by applying a negative voltage. sing a liquid metal that can change its shape allows us to modify antenna properties more dramatically than is possible with a fixed conductor,
The scientists created the tunable antenna by using electrochemical reactions to shorten and elongate a filament of liquid metal and change the antenna operating frequency.
Applying a small positive voltage causes the metal to flow into a capillary, while applying a small negative voltage makes the metal withdraw from the capillary. he positive voltage electrochemically deposits an oxide on the surface of the metal that lowers the surface tension,
while a negative potential removes the oxide to increase the surface tension. These differences in surface tension dictate which direction the metal will flow,
Dr Adams explained. his advance makes it possible to remove or regenerate enough of the xide skinwith an applied voltage to make the liquid metal flow into or out of the capillary.
We call this lectrochemically controlled capillarity, which is much like an electrochemical pump for the liquid metal.
Although antenna properties can be reconfigured to some extent by using solid conductors with electronic switches
the liquid metal approach greatly increases the range over which the antenna operating frequency can be tuned. or eutectic gallium-indium monopoles with lengths between 75m and 4m, the measured resonance frequency tunes from 0. 66 GHZ to 3. 4hz for a tuning
ratio to 5. 2: 1, which is beyond the ratio obtained by switch or varactor-based antennas. urthermore, the measured total efficiency ranges from 41%to 70,
%which, while lower than a conventional monopole, presents a tradeoff between efficiency and versatility that is evident in most tunable systems. ur antenna prototype using liquid metal can tune over a range of at least two times greater than systems using electronic switches,
Dr Adams said. Myriads of potential applications await within the realm of mobile devices. obile device sizes are continuing to shrink
and the burgeoning Internet of things will likely create an enormous demand for small wireless systems, Dr Adams said. nd as the number of services that a device must be capable of supporting grows,
so too will the number of frequency bands over which the antenna and RF (reconfigurable radiofrequency) front-end must operate. his combination will create a real antenna design challenge for mobile systems
because antenna size and operating bandwidth tend to be conflicting tradeoffs. e
#Scientists Create Single-Molecule Diode The idea of creating a single-molecule diode a circuit element that directs current flow was suggested first more than 40 years ago, in 1974, by researchers Arieh Aviram of IBM Thomas
J. Watson Research center and Mark Ratner of New york University. Scientists have since been exploring the charge-transport properties of molecules.
They have shown that single-molecules attached to metal electrodes can be made to act as a variety of circuit elements,
including resistors, switches, transistors, and, indeed, diodes. They have learned that it is possible to see quantum mechanical effects
such as interference, manifest in the conductance properties of molecular junctions. onstructing a device where the active elements are only a single molecule has long been a tantalizing dream in nanoscience,
Dr Venkataraman said. ur new approach created a single-molecule diode that has a high rectification and a high ncurrent.
Since a diode acts as an electricity valve, its structure needs to be asymmetric so that electricity flowing in one direction experiences a different environment than electricity flowing in the other direction.
In order to develop a single-molecule diode, researchers have designed simply molecules that have asymmetric structures. hile such asymmetric molecules do indeed display some diode-like properties,
they are said not effective team member Brian Capozzi, a Phd student at Columbia University. In order to overcome the issues associated with asymmetric molecular design,
the scientists focused on developing an asymmetry in the environment around the molecular junction. They surrounded the active molecule (oligomer of thiophene-1,
1-dioxide) with an ionic solution and used gold metal electrodes of different sizes to contact the molecule.
Their results, reported in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, achieved rectification ratios as high as 250: 50 times higher than earlier designs.
The ncurrent flow in their devices can be more than 0. 1 microamps which is a lot of current to be passing through a single-molecule.
And, because this new technique is implemented so easily, it can be applied to all nanodevices of all types,
including those that are made with graphene electrodes
#Gold Nano-Spirals Could Protect Against Identity Theft Most other investigators who have studied the remarkable properties of microscopic spirals have done so by arranging discrete nanoparticles in a spiral pattern:
similar to spirals drawn with a series of dots of ink on a piece of paper. By contrast, the nano-spirals created by Dr Davidson
and co-authors have solid arms and are much smaller: a square array with 100 nano-spirals on a side is less than 0. 01 mm wide. hey are certainly smaller than any of the spirals wee found reported in the scientific literature,
said Dr Davidson, first author of the paper reporting the results in the journal Nanophotonics.
When these spirals are shrunk to sizes smaller than the wavelength of visible light, they develop unusual optical properties.
For example, when they are illuminated with infrared laser light, they emit visible blue light. A number of crystals produce this effect, called frequency doubling or harmonic generation, to various degrees.
The strongest frequency doubler previously known is the synthetic crystal beta barium borate but the nano-spirals produce four times more blue light per unit volume.
When infrared laser light strikes the tiny spirals, it is absorbed by electrons in the gold arms.
These arms are so thin that the electrons are forced to move along the spiral. Electrons that are driven toward the center absorb enough energy
so that some of them emit blue light at double the frequency of the incoming infrared light. The spirals also have a distinctive response to polarized laser light.
Linearly polarized light, like that produced by a Polaroid filter, vibrates in a single plane.
When struck by such a light beam the amount of blue light the nano-spirals emit varies as the angle of the plane of polarization is rotated through 360 degrees.
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